The journey towards authenticity

The journey towards authenticity is a lifelong journey. Ironically the first taste we have that we are not being authentically ourselves is when we feel that we are robbed of the opportunity to be ourselves. This realisation can be subtle, as subtle as not wanting to appear silly in front of our school friends when we were younger. We might give in because initially we do not realise the importance of being authentically ourselves. We might not even have such a vocabulary to describe exactly what is authenticity. We have not discovered ourselves.

Only when we have steered away from the main branch so to speak, do we realise that there is something different here. That we don't feel as happy as we should and that we feel that a sense of fulfillment is somehow absent in us. That is the beginning of the seeking where we journey back into ourselves.

It doesn't help as well that remaining authentically ourselves is a lifelong process that encompasses life and all that it entails. Beyond just the parabolic, our ability to be authentically ourself is being affected by our life stage and the life stages of all the people in our life and how it impacts us and how successful we are at bridging these, the relationships we are in (type of partner, the personality of our partners, the expectations and fears of our partners), our own resources which either limits or enable us to do certain thing and restricts us from others (education, opportunities, culture, religion, political climate, access to spiritual knowledge etc), the place in the world we live in (3rd world vs 1st world, geographic advantages of the country you are staying in etc) and you get the idea. There are sometimes too many variables if you wish to list them all out.

The question is, over time, the journey towards authenticity is also a reflection of our own life goals. Its said that in essence every journey is a spiritual journey. And that all journeys are internal, even when we think it isn't. Authenticity is in us as much as we are in it. There is also no outer and inner, there is only you and it. So no matter what your life goals are, just the drive to be authentic will open the space for you to have greater inner awareness and over time, you will also realise that the journey towards authenticity is an attempt by you to capture your essence... the question we must than ask ourselves is whether there is such a thing as an essence in us. Or if you have stripped away all your stories and concepts and knowledge etc, you might discover that your essence is truly nothingness.